Chain of Fools

7

The woman seated in a bay-window breakfast nook just off the kitchen looked up at us and smiled uncertainly but did not get up. In her early eighties, Ruth Osborne was still tall and sturdy looking-"statuesque" in the parlance of her young adulthood-with sun-bronzed rough hands and a long face with large curious eyes, as in a painting of a Bloomsbury figure. She had a big head of Gravel Gertie hair and "wore a shapeless green shift. Lying alongside, but not on, her bare feet were a pair of worn leather sandals.

"Hi, Mom," Janet said, and kissed her mother on the cheek. "How are you doing? Dale and I brought a friend along."

Mrs. Osborne looked at Dale without apparent recognition and then at me. As Mrs. Osborne studied me, Dale leaned down, kissed her on the cheek, and said, "Hi, Ruth," but the old woman stiffened and looked embarrassed.

"I'm Don Strachey," I said, and Mrs. Osborne extended her hand, which I grasped. Her skin was dry, her grip firm.

Without enthusiasm, she said, "I always enjoy meeting my daughter's friends."

"Don's up from Albany," Janet said. "He's a private investigator down there."

She took this in, smiling tentatively, and said, "Oh, that's nice." Then she turned and looked out the window. We followed her gaze and all of us peered out at the backyard, where the sun shone down on the freshly mowed lawn and beyond the trees there were shadows.

"Mrs. Osborne, that's Dale there," Elsie said. Janet had introduced Elsie Fletcher to me on the way in as her mother's longtime housekeeper She said, "You know Dale, don't you? That's Dale there." But Mrs. Osborne did not respond and continued gazing into the backyard.

"I'm the mouthy one," Dale said. Then Dale looked at me. "Ruth and I always hit it off," she said, "on account of we're both-as people around Edensburg like to call it-'outspoken.' If we hadn't seen eye to eye on so many things, we'd probably have strangled each other."

I said lamely, "I'll bet."

Ruth Osborne was now somewhere else, and when Janet said, "Mom?" she got no response.

"We'll be back in a few minutes, Mom," Janet said, and indicated for us to follow her.

Dale, Elsie, and I went with Janet down a dim, wide hallway and into a book-lined study, where Janet shut the door. The oak library table in the center of the room was heaped with books, as was the old leather swivel chair behind it. It looked as if some sorting out of Tom Osborne's library had commenced some years earlier but had not gotten far. The oil portrait over the fireplace of a man in a turn-of-the-century man-of-parts getup appeared to be the Herald's founder, Daniel Lincoln Osborne. Below the painting, faded family photographs were propped on the mantel, with Tom, Ruth, and the five children at different ages and in various poses, most of them in wilderness settings. Also on the mantel was a bronze urn with a lid on it. An inscription had been typed on a sliver of paper and taped to the urn. It read: William T. "Tom" Osborne- 1911–1989.

Janet said to Elsie, "How long has she been like this?"

"Since yesterday morning," Elsie said, looking frightened. "I was going to call you today if she didn't snap out of it. June called this morning and said she'd be stopping in, but I was going to call you anyway." Elsie and Janet exchanged significant looks.

"And she was like this just now when June was here?" Janet asked. When Elsie nodded, Janet said, "Oh, God." To me, Janet said, "For a couple of years now there's been short-term memory loss, and she's gone blank on occasion-just sort of zombied out for five- and ten-minute periods. But nothing this long lasting."

"Mrs. Osborne was always a talker," Elsie said. "She had a mind like a whip, and boy oh boy did she ever let you know exactly what she was thinking. That's not Ruth Osborne out there, what you're seeing now. Not by a long shot."

Dale said to me," 'Be prepared,' we were told as children. But what can anybody do to prepare for this?"

"What did June want, anyway?" Janet asked."

"We go weeks without seeing June," Elsie said to me, clearly hopeful that I might become an ally in her disapproval of a daughter who didn't visit her mother often enough. To Janet, she said, "June and Parson both wanted to talk about selling the Herald to that big company that sounds like somebody sneezing."

"InfoCom?"

"Yes, they wanted Mrs. Osborne to vote for that one."

"Parson too?"

"Both of them did, yes. They tried to get Mrs. Osborne to come in here with them and shut the door, I suppose. But she wouldn't budge from the breakfast nook, so I heard a lot of what was discussed. I had baked corn to get in the oven, you know."

Janet picked up the cue and said, "Mom sure loves your baked corn, Elsie."

"Oh yes, she enjoys it when I cook."

"So what did Mom say about InfoCom and her vote?"

"Why, she didn't say anything at all. She said hello and how do you do and not a word more, as far as I'm aware. Several times while they were here, June said, 'Mom, what's the matter?' Or, 'Mom, are you listening to me?' She knew your mother wasn't right, Janet. She saw that it was more than just forgetfulness this time."

"Did June say anything about it to you?"

"No, but she gave me a look on the way out-like I knew all the time your mother's mind was going, and now June knew it too. Parson Bates was all smiles, but he was right there the whole time, so he got the picture too, you can bet your boots on that."

"I ran into them on their way out," Janet said, "but neither one of them mentioned anything about Mom's being different."

"Those two are up to something," Elsie said ominously, and no one in the room contradicted her.

Janet told Elsie she would contact Mrs. Osborne's physician, who had diagnosed early stages of Alzheimer's disease a year earlier, and find out if anything should or could be done at this point. Dale said that was wise, but in her medical opinion little could be done with Mrs. Osborne beyond help, patience, and kindliness. Experiments were underway with drugs, but so far the benefits were far from certain.

We were about to leave the study when the door suddenly opened and there stood Ruth Osborne smiling in at us. "I was wondering where you all had got to," she said pleasantly. "It looks as if you must have gone looking for something to read."

"Mom, hi!"

Dale said, "We weren't reading, Ruth, just visiting the family museum."

"Well, this is certainly it I'm Ruth Osborne," she said to me, extending her hand. She looked fully alert.

"Don Strachey. I'm honored to meet you."

"My husband could never part with a book, and neither can I. It's just acquisitiveness and a minor variety of greed What good's a book if it's not passed around and read? All these books being held captive here-for what? It's one of my six or eight moral weaknesses."

I said, "You always think you're going to reread them."

"Oh, not me. I have no illusions about that. I just like knowing they're in here gathering dust. The only ones I look at anymore are my son's books. Eric was a marvelous writer Have you read him'"

"My lover and I sometimes read Eric aloud to each other when we're in the mountains It's like having a companion with us who has a sixth sense for understanding the wilderness and who can put it into English "

"Yes, he was extremely gifted. Eric was murdered in May, however."

"I know. I'm sorry."

Elsie eased out the door of the study and threw an astonished look back at us as she went.

Mrs. Osborne said, "The police say it was some mysterious drifter who did it, but I wonder. The Osbornes have been a progressive force in these parts for a good, long time, and it wouldn't surprise me if somebody decided to get even with me or my husband by murdering Eric. Tom's dead, of course-that's him on the mantel-but Janet and my son Daniel and I are carrying on the family's progressive traditions, and some of the reactionary forces we've taken on over the years are ruth less people with long memories. And I've got another theory too that's even uglier than that one."

"Mom," Janet said, "Don is a private investigator, as a matter of fact. He's going to be looking into Eric's murder. He's also investigating something else that's come up. I don't want you to worry, because I can take care of myself, but-well, the thing is, somebody may be trying to get at me too."

Mrs. Osborne's brow furrowed and she said, "I'm not surprised to hear it."

"You're not?"

"No, not with the vote approaching on the sale of the Herald. With you or Dan or me out of the way, the vote would shift from a majority for Griscomb to a majority for InfoCom. Millions of dollars are at stake, and, of course, control over the soul of the paper. Bloody murder has been committed over a lot less. I've thought about warning you, Janet. But when you're my age you hesitate to tell people-even family, or especially family-that you suspect plots. People are liable to think you're losing your marbles."

Janet blushed. "Oh, Mom, you know you can always talk to me and Dale about anything."

I said, "Was there anything in particular, Mrs. Osborne, that set off your suspicions of a plot?"

Janet gave me a quick glance that I took to mean it might not be wise to encourage her mother's imaginings. But Mrs. Osborne said somberly, "Yes, it first hit me that something might be afoot about a month after Eric's death when Janet's older brother Chester came by and tried to persuade me to change my vote to support selling the Herald to InfoCom. Chester threw a fit-he's always had a vicious temper, which I'm sorry to say comes to him by way of the Watsons, my family-and he whooped and hollered about the family losing so much money in a sale to Griscomb that in order to keep that from happening, somebody else might have to get hurt."

We stared at Mrs. Osborne, who looked at us miserably. Dale said, "Somebody else?"

"That's what Chester said. 'Somebody else might have to get hurt.'"

"Mom, for chrissakes, why didn't you tell me this?"

"Janet-does this make any sense? I think I forgot. I know I meant to tell you right away. But… crazy as this sounds, I think I just forgot to."

The phone next to me rang, but no one in the room moved to pick it up and I heard Elsie answer it in the kitchen.

I said, "Mrs. Osborne, did you ask Chester what he meant by his threat?"

"No," she said, "I was so mad at Chester, I just told him to pick up his bundle of papers and to get out of my sight. Which he did. Mad I was, and a little bit frightened of him too. It's a terrible thing for a mother to think about, but I know from painful experience that Chester can hurt people "

"Did you think he was threatening you?" Janet said.

Mrs. Osborne shrugged and looked profoundly sad. Elsie had appeared beside her, and now she said to me, "Mr. Strachey?"

"Yes?"

"There's a man on the phone for you. I think it's important."

"A man by the name of Callahan?"

"Yes. Mr. Callahan. He sounded tetchy."

"That's because he broke his foot, and the hospital has probably finished with him and is about to shove him out to the curb in a wheelchair and leave him there. Maybe one of you could wait here," I said to Janet and Dale, "and one of you could drive me over to rescue Timmy."

"Sure, let's go," Dale said. "The ER staff won't abandon him at the curb, but they'll park him in a corridor somewhere and treat him like a misplaced cadaver on a gurney. He won't like it."

"And then," I said, "I'd like to track down Chester and ask him some questions. Is he in town?"

"Yes, and probably out at the club by now," Mrs. Osborne said, checking what looked like a huge Timex on her wrist. "But it wouldn't be a good idea to go interrogating him there. You could probably catch him at home after seven. He and Pauline generally watch the CNN business report over drinks at seven and sit down to dinner at eight. Are you going to question June too, Mr. Strachey? That's my other daughter. She doesn't have the history of violence that Chester does, but she's a treacherous piece of work in her own right."

We all looked at her. "I'm sure I'll be talking to June too," I said.

"Good. Be careful of them both."

"Okay."

"I haven't seen June in weeks," Mrs. Osborne said, "but I'm sure she's out there somewhere conniving to destroy the wonderful institution that was built by her grandfather and her father. That's my husband right there on the mantel," she said, "in that urn that could stand a good polishing. Tom was a remarkable man, and I miss him with such hurt. Maybe I'm nuts-it runs in the family-but I like to come in here and sit by that urn once in a while, especially in the evening. And believe it or not, it helps. Tom had requested that his ashes be scattered over the mountains, and Eric and Janet were shocked when I refused to let them do it. But I happen to draw comfort from Tom's gravelly presence up there. And he's not in any position to mind, so what's the beef?

"Of course, I wanted to stash Eric up there too, beside his father. But Eldon was sure Eric would want to be left out in the woods where he was happiest, so I acquiesced. Oh, it's all so hard and complicated. Mr. Strachey, don't outlive the people you love-that's my advice. It's just way too hard. I want to live until September eighth, when I can vote to save the Herald, but after that-well, we'll see."

"Mom, what do you mean!"

Mrs. Osborne let out a mordant little laugh. "Oh, don't get excited, Janet, I'm not about to pull a plastic bag over my head, and of course I'd never own a gun. I'm just talking."

In the awkward silence that followed, I could just barely make out the distant sound of a man's raised voice coming out of the telephone receiver down the hall in the kitchen. I couldn't pick up his words, just his plaintive tone.